Explore Faton Limani's journey in the Coaching Industry

Rootless means “without roots”, free. It’s one of the underlying themes of our conversation, to not stick with what is already out there for you, what everybody’s telling you to do. It’s about wanting to create your own path instead. It’s very important to listen, gather information and create the space to hear everybody’s perspectives. At the end of the day, it’s important to sit back and work with that information and come up with your own recipe about what you’re trying to do. Rootless resonates a lot with that, always being curious but at the end of the day to be someone who uses resources in your own unique way. That word resonates with me a lot as someone who has moved from one country to another. That kind of change can make you feel like you don’t know anybody, have no roots, and you feel like you don’t belong in that place. It’s about finding out how to make out there, how to start doing something you want to do in a place you don’t feel rooted. It’s a very important question and I think this platform has a very noble mission because it is helping people who feel like they don’t belong. They see all and get bombarded everyday with advice on how they should do things. It is very important for them to have a place where they can come to and get some help to start making sense on what to do and how they can do it. – Faton Limani

I was born and raised in Kosovo. I went to primary, secondary and high school there. I also got my Bachelor’s and master’s degree there in Business Administration. During this time, I worked for the US Department of Defense with a civil contractor company. I worked for seven years in Kosovo and then in Iraq. Afterwards, I got back to Kosovo, decided to get into public life because I thought it would be a great platform to give back to my country and people. I ran to become a member of parliament and I didn’t win but for a first timer it was interesting and a great learning experience. That experience showed me I had many things I needed to learn. I hit many frontiers and that helped me start my journey looking for schools or programs that would help get answers to many questions I had. Then, we came to the US, in 2011 and started to look for programs. That’s when I discovered the mid-career master program for Public Administration in Harvard Kennedy school. I applied, got admitted and I started in 2013. During the time at Harvard, I came across a course called “Adapting Leadership” which lasted two terms. That’s when I realized it was something I wanted to focus more on because it helped me to generate the capacity to find the answers, I didn’t have. After that I stayed in the school as a teacher assistant and instructor for about three years. During this time, in 2016, I started my leadership development consultancy, “Leadership Advancement Associate” in collaboration with some of my colleagues from the school. That’s how my journey started. Three years later, I switched to work in administration at Harvard and last year, when the pandemic hit, the whole school went online. Since I came to Massachusetts almost 10 years ago, I always asked if there are Albanian community schools where the kids can learn their language and culture. There was only one school with 30 kids. I know that in this state there are hundreds thousands of Albanians. I didn’t understand why there were so few students. Talking with more people from our community I found out some of the problems were the distance, schedule, cost, it was not convenient for them. When we started at Harvard doing classes online, I connected the dots. I thought that my wife and I could use our experience to establish something and offer to our community across the world a platform where kids can learn in Albanian about Albanian culture. We can also provide them with other skills. We started last September and now we’re in second term, have more than 400 kids taking Albanian language and culture classes and have more than 150 students taking other courses. It has been a good start. It’s still the beginning, we’re still learning a lot, experimenting how to make this better but so far it’s going very well. All our courses are free of charge for all Albanians around the world because the only thing we want them to have is a PC and internet connection. We don’t want them to have any obstacle for wanting to learn something new. Everybody is always welcomed. We never say ‘no’ to whoever wants to join us. This has been my journey so far. – Faton Limani

That’s a very good question. Firstly, I was lucky to have the opportunity to go to graduate school and take the course I mentioned earlier. I got to learn more and use it to help others. That course helped me a lot to do this work with myself. I always had the idea that I wanted to help the world, make the world better. However, I never really had the opportunity or platform where I could do more robust work with myself, clarify what’s my purpose, what I can do and need to learn, what other capacities do I need to build to achieve my purpose and work toward it. I was very lucky to be sitting at that class and see how their framework had a positive effect on me. I thought that if it helped me, I could do the same thing by bringing this to other people who don’t have the same opportunity like I did. For me, that was the biggest help. Then I could have a clearer picture of what I want to do and what I can bring to the world so I can make this happen. – Faton Limani

One thing that I do through this company and framework is to guide people to build capacity to ask for help. That is important in many different phases of our professional and personal journey. For me, I was lucky that I was connected to a network of people who were doing a lot of similar work out there. I had great mentors, people I could go and ask questions about what kind of literature I could use to go deeper, how to better understand the needs of the market and the people. I was lucky to be surrounded by great people who helped, supported and shared their experience and knowledge with me. Even today, I still have those connections and those people I always fall back to and they’re always happy to help, which is great. We also have the adaptive leadership network. I was part of the founding team and now it’s run by my professor and fellow colleagues and alumni. It’s a great way for us to stay connected within the community and the body of knowledge. It’s also about the individual connections we created as friends and colleagues. That helps a lot because any time I hit a frontier and need some advice there is always somebody out there ready to help me. – Faton Limani

Leadership development work is a bit unique. We do what we preach because it’s very important to teach clients on how to be very careful and try not entering with a vision or believing to have the solution. We always encourage people to start with listening, start with accepting that you don’t know everything. We always help people step back and start from a place of eagerness to learn. In the beginning, a lot of consulting companies have their own framework they use, their own processes that are well established. I personally have some of the processes that work well with clients but I approach every new client from a place of curiosity. My process starts with asking questions about the problems they’re facing, what they need and I go back and evaluate my current processes and whether they work. They work 95% but I know that I have to improve or add something new that is effective in that particular case. Basically, there is not really a set of processes where “one size fits all”. I am actually against it. – Faton Limani

Through personal connections and networking. I highly suggest participating in events and being part of different organizations, going out there mingling with people, listening, asking questions. Leadership consultancy takes a lot of trust building because it’s about solving difficult problems in organizations and a lot of people within the organizations really have to trust you first in order to hire you. I am not there to tell them the good news, I’m there to tell them what’s going wrong and how to fix it. A lot of organizations don’t have the ability to face that kind of news or evaluation because their environment is not really built for people to tell the truth to the bosses and management. It takes a lot of trust building, developing and nurturing those relations. I also practice giving them bits of the work beforehand so they can start understanding what you do. It’s very important before getting into a more solid business relation with your clients. – Faton Limani

I think it’s all about delivering and solving real problems for clients. You need good listening skills so you can really understand the problems that the clients or organizations are facing. After that is the phase of taking action and helping them solve their problems. You really have to deliver, make sure that whatever you promise, you deliver. That creates credibility and brand. Every time I help a client, organization or community, I have the desire to impact. That’s the best way to go about branding in this line of work. – Faton Limani

I think it’s a matter of the ultimate impact your work is making. Are you really solving the real problems that your clients have? Are you really delivering for them? Are you making a positive impact for them? Do they see concrete results from the work and services you provided? I think that’s very important. That’s why we have created the feedback loop where we try to see what was our impact with our clients, how will our work serve them in the future. Then, we can constantly advertise that feedback and testimonials so others can see that our work is efficient. Ultimately, real results are essential, nothing else works better. I definitely think it’s a good idea to write a book. Writing a book is not a trivial process, it requires you to sit down, do research and see what works in a real world and what doesn’t. In my opinion, it’s about generating new knowledge. However, I don’t think it’s a must. In my case, I use other people’s work by quoting them, citing and mentioning the sources, that’s extremely important. You can be effective by just being someone that can use the others authors’ work in a more effective way, tailor it to have the impact that your clients need or solve the problems they have. The book is a great help if you focus on it 100% but you don’t necessarily need to write one. – Faton Limani

I deliberately started as a generalist; I didn’t want to find a niche. I am still in that phase because I prefer starting from a place of curiosity and use it as a learning process where you realize which are your strengths and where you can get focused more. There is a disadvantage of starting with a niche in this business. You’re taking a lot of risk because you’re putting all your eggs in one basket. If that doesn’t work, it can be a huge setback. The best choice is to start as a generalist but with the mindset that at some point, based on your experience, you can start focusing more in one particular group of clients or sector, industry or process. Then, it can evolve more naturally instead of choosing to go directly into a niche as a startup. This is what I’m doing right now. I’m in a process trying to figure my business strengths and focus. However, I am a fan of the idea of working with different industries to experiment, try things out, see what works, which industry is better or what type of client is a better fit. – Faton Limani

I think that everyone tries to find the balance of his own special ambitions and aspirations: the things you want to gather for yourself from this world (titles, money, wealth) and the things you want to give back to the world. A lot of people are dealing with this dilemma but don’t take the effort to sit down and work on it. I’ve had the opportunity to do so and for me it’s very important that I have this balance. I understand that I’m also a parent and husband and have to provide, make sure that my personal holding environment is solid. At the same time, I always think about how I can give more back to the world. What I’m doing for the Albanian kids is one of those projects where I think I’m giving back more than I’m taking. My entrepreneurship has kind of always revolved around that dilemma. How much do I focus on gathering for myself and giving back? It’s not easy because every work you do out there requires a lot of energy and focus. However, I always try to do my best, create my space, my holding environment so I can work on both of these in a much more productive way. – Faton Limani

Firstly, I believe mindset is something you learn from your experience, family, school, upbringing. I like to say that I have been lucky that I’ve always been surrounded with people who have given me good advice and critique. I always say that there’s always a lesson, something to learn if you have that kind of open-minded mindset. During my journey I always had people who helped me when I needed them to. We’re not here accidentally and that’s why I have this tendency to want to give back to the world. I think I should give back and help people just like I was helped, open doors like my doors were opened when I needed them. I think it’s important to keep that mindset of seeing things as opportunities to learn and improve. You have to know that you have limits, blind spots, that you’ll always need help, new information to learn something new in order to improve and be better every day. This is the mindset I try to use every day. – Faton Limani

Work hard, be open to learning and improving. If you’re not open to fail daily but at the same time generate the capacity to learn from those failures and improve, you won’t make it. A friend and colleague of mine says: “Fail, fail again and fail better”. I think it’s very important because people with a stiff mindset think they have all the answers and don’t need to learn anything. That is not productive. The environment around us, our clients, the organizations we try to help is shifting, changing and we have to be able to adapt and help the people we are trying to serve. If you don’t have the capacity to do that for yourself, then how can you help others? – Faton Limani

Firstly, you have to understand that you have many different roles in both your professional and personal life. Roles come with different expectations. As a consultant, you have to understand what’s expected of you timewise, in terms of energy and other resources that you have to put in. It’s very important to know how much it takes to do this well. You also need to keep in mind that you don’t only have this role in your life. It’s how you balance them is very important, how you create this space, how do you negotiate these different expectations that matters. That balance helps us to be more effective in the role we are trying to do. You need to work hard to create that space where you can focus on doing what you’re trying to do. It takes a lot of work especially if you’re working with clients, people who are asking for help. It’s essential that you understand the needs, problems, challenges they’re facing and present productive options to help them overcome these challenges. You have to stay fresh, current with what is being developed out there. There are new ways of solving problems for people and organizations. You have to create that environment where you can always fall back and learn new things. You need to have a lot of curiosity and be a good listener. Be confident in what you know, figure out what you don’t know, what you need to learn and where you can learn it so you can improve yourself and be more effective while helping others. – Faton Limani

As I mentioned earlier, I completely disagree with “One size fit all”. I believe that a lot of what we do could be similar even though it can help two different types of people or organizations. I always say that you have to be able to step back and see if something works with an individual, organization, society, region, continent and figure out how you can then adapt what you were already using. Each of us, even as individuals, but also as organizations and societies have different ways of doing things, have our own uniqueness. Something that works for me doesn’t necessarily have to work for everybody. Keep this in mind when you approach problems, challenges, people you’re trying to help. I know a lot of companies and organizations who just copy and paste. That’s not the way it should be. Even technical services, which try to provide to the people, require tailoring and working to understand what works and doesn’t, if a process needs tweaking so that it can better help them. – Faton Limani

Don’t be afraid to ask for help. I know most people are not good at this because it’s a very vulnerable process, it shows incompetence. Every time you ask for help you may feel like you’re admitting you don’t know something. When you move to a new country, you don’t know people, how things work, you’re rootless indeed. It’s important to work on the ability to ask for help. It’s very important when you’re trying to do something and don’t have the sense yet of what it takes and where you are in terms of what you’re trying to do. It’s also very important to ask the right people in the right places. Sometimes you can spend a lot of energy and time asking the wrong people or looking for answers in the wrong places. Keep asking for help, don’t be shy, keep asking those questions, listen more, gather that information, don’t jump to conclusions too fast. As we say in leadership, uncertainty is your friend. Stay in that space of incompetency and uncertainty, keep asking questions, gather information and at some point, it will all start making sense. So, experiment when taking those first steps. Another issue I’ve seen happen a lot, not only with entrepreneurs, is that a lot of times people get caught up when they try to do something and they start big. They want to have a big impact in a very short amount of time. I don’t think that’s productive. I think it’s very important to generate the capacity to start small. Do that for some time until you really understand how this works, then you can start scaling it. I think that’s ok, even if it’s very trivial like a simple website, product, service, as long as it embodies what you’re trying to do and offer to the world. Start there. It’s okay if you start small as long as you have a big goal in mind. However, it’s helpful to have the mindset that it is just a starting point and this is a helpful learning process for you. Once you learn better, you’ll improve and increase the impact of what you’re trying to do. Celebrate your small successes every day, tap yourself in the back. At the same time don’t be satisfied with your achievements, keep going, keep pushing the boundaries, keep challenging yourself. – Faton Limani